The DotBlog: Tri-State Championships

Welcome! My name is Matthew “MattDotZeb” Zaborowski. You may know me as a tournament organizer (TO), a streamer, a commentator, or as a competitor. My most recent endeavor has been the most challenging out of anything I have done with nearly a decade spent in our community: The Melee Games. It has taken a demanding role in my life, and for good cause! Allow me to introduce you to this project through the DotBlog. I will be utilizing this blog weekly, every Wednesday at 12pm EST, to provide you updates pertaining to The Melee Games.

This week we discuss the first Smash Council Meeting, the New England Finals, the upcoming Tri-State Finals, and travel to the West Coast to review sign ups for TMG: California.

The Smash Council

The Boston University Smash Tournament (aka BUST), in addition to having The Melee Games finals and being an Apex World Circuit event, held the first ever collegiate Smash Council Meeting. This was a huge first step in bringing the New England collegiate community, particularly around Boston, to the next level. Representatives from 14 schools had a round-table discussion for an hour wherein they introduced their clubs, discussed their individual focuses, and shared ideas on how a major collaborative event could take place. From an organizational standpoint this discussion is extremely informative and thought provoking. I implore you to give it a listen, especially if you’re a collegiate competitor or organizer. You can download the audio here.

New England Face-Off

For the second season in a row, MIT and UMass Boston met in Grand Finals of the New England Melee Games. Previously, MIT edged out UMB with a 1 stock victory. This time, UMass Boston went into the finals hungry for victory. The two schools set up for an 8 vs 8 match. For those wanting to watch here’s MIT vs UMB from the Spring and MIT vs UMB from this last weekend.

UMB acquired a quick lead with Sing defeating Metlwing and taking 2 stocks from MIT’s Rndl. Not long after, MIT’s captain, XPilot turned things up a notch and took 8 stocks to give MIT the lead. The following players from UMB fell short of taking 4 or more stocks, which gave MIT an even greater lead. UMB’s Kaiju stepped in to defeat Skip and put in some solid work against Rime to shrink MIT’s lead to 14-12. Next, UMB’s most volatile player, Flexed, stepped up to the cube and tied things up 12-12. Though he had a questionable performance against MIT in the spring where he took only 1 stock, Flexed has seen some solid tournament performances and is currently ranked 2nd on the UMB PR. This time around, his Fox got into a comfort zone and went to town. When he was finally dispatched, MIT had 3 stocks remaining and cheers rang out from the UMB side as the crew battle looked all but over for MIT. The anchor (last player) for MIT was a largely unknown player: Frat Chicken. His Falco removed Flexed’s last stock swiftly, but in the process he self-destructed one of his stocks. With the score at 3-8, the rarely-seen anchor from MIT showed impressive ability in taking down UMB’s Memory. However, with one stock remaining against UMB’s Crow, even Frat Chicken’s powerful defense was unable to hold up against Crow’s Ganondorf.

UMass Boston will be paired up against the winner of Tri-State at Apex2015.

Tri-State Tri-School Showdown

What do Cornell, Columbia, and Rutgers have in common? They’ll all be at Nebulous in New York City this weekend, Saturday November 29th! Just about two weeks ago, Rutgers took down Pitt in order to advance to Tri-State Grand Finals. Cornell and Columbia will be playing to find out who will take on Rutgers. You can look forward to each 5 vs 5 battle at 2pm EST on www.twitch.tv/FreeSaltines.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the stronger players each school possesses.

Columbia:
Cheezpuff. Cheezpuff has been playing for 2 years, and is the Captain of the Columbia TMG team. His TMG performance includes taking 8 stocks from the Manhattan School of Music, and 6 stocks from Stony Brook University. Recently he fought through a hard round of pools to get 25th at Justice 4.

ZeroOmega. Currently recognized as Columbia’s best player, ZeroOmega got his start in 2010 at D1’s Sudden Death tournament series. Most recently he got 2nd place at Nebulous on November 22nd. His TMG performance has been stellar, including taking 12 stocks from the Manhattan School of Music, and 6 stocks from Stony Brook University.

Cornell:
Icer. A player since 2011, Icer is currently the top player at Cornell. His crew battle performance has been solid, including clutching things out to win against the State University of New York at Oneonta (SUNY Oneonta). As a player his best regional performance thus far has been 17th at Zenith 2014.

Lu, Justin. The Captain of the Cornell team, Lu, Justin shot out of the gate in their first crew battle against SUNY Cortland in which he took 21 stocks as the 2nd player for Cornell. This was not repeated against SUNY Oneonta in which he took only 3 stocks as starter.

Rutgers:
Swedish Delight. One of the strongest players in The Melee Games, Swedish Delight is ranked 1st in his school and, if not for inactivity at tournaments, would be 1st on the New Jersey GarPR. His sheik has netted him respectable placings at large events such as Zenith 2014 (9th) and EVO 2014 (25th). In TMG, he’s performed as you may expect. He took 13 stocks from Princeton, 5 stocks from NJIT (winning the crew battle and defeating Qerb), and 3 stocks from Pitt (winning the crew battle against Abate as anchor). As of yet, Swedish has not lost all of his stocks in any crew battle.

Takoyaki. A player since 2010, Takoyaki is considered one of Rutger’s top3 best players. While he has no national results, his Fox has taken him to top 3 at multiple locals. In TMG he has performed solidly, taking 5 stocks from NJIT and 6 stocks from Pitt.

The Western Front

TMG: California launched sign-ups exactly 1 week ago. Since then 30 schools and 103 players have shown interest in participating. A total of 17 schools from SoCal and 13 schools from NorCal have players signed up thus far. If you’re a college student in California and would like to participate, click the image! It will bring you to the sign-up form. It takes 5 players for a school to qualify for TMG, be sure to sign up! A reminder for the high schoolers that signed up: This is for colleges only.

Some notable sign ups, in no order, are: SFAT, Mike Haze, East Coast Jeff, and PewPewU.

Certainly, it is not just those 4 that are noteworthy. One of my favorite things about running TMG is that I get to learn of players across the participating regions that I otherwise would not have, so I expect to familiarize myself with more players as the upcoming season progresses.

Check out the DotBlog every Wednesday at 12pm EST right here on MeleeItOnMe. If you have any suggestions, criticism, or ideas for the blog please feel free to contact me @DotZeb or at www.facebook.com/MattDotZeb.

Feel free to help Support TMG by Liking us on Facebook, Subscribing on YouTube, or Following us on Twitch!

Thanks to Lauren “Ten” Casapao and Anna “HouseWife” Zotta for their help in editing this entry.

Past Entries:
Introduction
3000 Miles